Dumb edward - there is no such thing as a third of a snog, so you'll have to snog the only one of the above that you haven't snogged before....i.e. Neil

Anyway, following the conclusive victory of the Neil/Macca/Muki show I have sent the following email to ICP to push things in our favour. Our cause will be further supported if you also send emails expressing your alignment with the popular will of the sport climbing community

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Dear Directors of ICP

It is with great excitement that the sport climbing community of Australia has welcomed the news that Chris Sharma is coming to Australia for slideshows in both Sydney and Melbourne. His contribution to sport climbing across the globe is unparalleled, and we thank ICP for organising this opportunity for the sport climbing community to meet the God of Rock in the flesh.

Whilst Chris's abilities on rock are beyond comparison, a number of our community have expressed concerns that his oratory skills are an area where he still needs some personal development. For this reason we believe that the choice of a "local legend MC" for the event is one that requires careful consideration, both for the audience's enjoyment on the night as well as for Chris's career development as he approaches the twilight of the climbing phase of his life, and enters the phase where he will be increasingly reliant on his ability to entertain an audience with stories of his past glories.

With this in mind on behalf of the sport climbing community of Australia, I have undertaken a poll to recommend to you the most appropriate MC's to both entertain the audience and educate Mr Sharma on the art of public entertainment.

It is with great pleasure that I announce that the result of this comprehensive poll, which I believe will provide an atmosphere of friendly repartee to complement Chris's detailed comparison of hardness between legendary hard moves and routes: By popular demand I announce the following three local legends of Australian sport climbing who are willing to participate:
- Mr Neal Montieth: famous sport climber. After running out of crap bolts to replace in Victoria, his commitment for the sport is evidenced by his move from Melbourne to Sydney, where there is no end of crap bolts to replace.
- Mr Muki Woods: a close personal friend of both Chris Sharma and Lynn Hill, he is famous for equipping "Alis" which must be the most well travelled sport route in Australia.
- Macciza McPherson: inspired by the efforts of Sharma on Jumbo Love - where the God of Rock skipped clipping bolts and risked life and limb by whipping on modern sport climbing equipment capable of arresting an elephant; Macca has invented a new variant on sportclimbing which we call "Jumbo Sport" in honour of its progenitor whereby an ascent is made forgoing the clipping of all bolts and relying on the recent innovations in sport climbing such as "stoppers" and "cams".

Most exciting for you the sponsor of this event is that the above mentioned legends are willing to donate all appearance fees that they are rightfully due to the Safer Cliffs Australia cause, a cause that all the legends are extremely passionate about. Associating the Sharma brand with this gesture would give it considerable enhancement as recent surveys of the Australian sport climbing community have ranked donations to replacing crap bolts in Australia as more admirable than adopting a radioactive Ukrainian orphan.

Inspired by the magnanimous gesture of the legends I am also willing to donate any Agent's fee that I am due to the same cause as the legends.

The local legends and myself eagerly await your confirmation of the sport climbing communities wishes in this regard,

Sincerely

Mr. E. Slabovich

P.S. Macca gets a bit of a rash after eating seafood so can I please ask that there are a lot of chicken and vegetarian tapas available as he is likely to get quite hungry after "sharing the peace pipe" with Mr Sharma.

Maybe people (who>can afford $70 tickets) could just heckle him "LOCALS RULE!" style..

I could regret this but here it is anyway. A Chasers style film for nexts years Goatfest.

I will pay for 3 ppl to accompany me to the Chris Sharma night. They will be preferably male, arrogant, outspoken and generally obnoxious. We will start the evening mid afternoon with pre drink drinks. We will then take travellers travelling to the venue 2 hrs in advance. Mood will determine our next location, the only proviso being that no food is eaten and more alcohol is consumed. At the event we shall proced to the front row and basically just make complete fools of ourselves asking inane questions to Chris until we get kicked out. For example:

How hard do you really mean when you say hard hard?

Do you think world peace would be possible if everyone climbed?

Do you think life would be hard for fat ugly climbers?

Does sex before climbing hinder your performance?

Does climbing before sex hinder your performance?

And so on.

Simon has agreed to film and edit the whole thing. Thanks mate.

Any takers?

Note = To anyone connected to Chris visiting Australia who might read this and think that I would be even remotely serious about this whole idea, then think again. I would never do it. But if you guys want in, I would consider talking.

On 22/03/2013 shortman wrote:>Simon has agreed to film and edit the whole thing. Thanks mate.>>Any takers?>>Note = To anyone connected to Chris visiting Australia who might read>this and think that I would be even remotely serious about this whole idea,>then think again. I would never do it. But if you guys want in, I would>consider talking.>

Actually I think it would be pretty fun, but I think we should discuss further ideas under the cone of silence so as not to make our intentions too public before the great man's arrival.

On 22/03/2013 shortman wrote:>>How hard do you really mean when you say hard hard?

Now that Ondra has proved that hard hard is actually possible, how long do think it will be until somebody climbs hard hard hard?

Although I've voted for Neil and Muki and Macca, I would way rather see Glen Robbins as MC after his stunning goatfest presentation a couple of years ago.......but maybe this time he should have a bit more to drink.

I did think about including glen, but given I could only have eight options i had to cull pretty hard - it was a real toss up between kieren and glen but the big K just pipped him at the post. For what its worth I voted for Philip - would love to hear a LNL episode with Chris going tete a tete with phil.

I've got a response from ICP and its looking promising (on my other computer - will post later) so Neil, muki and Macca start psyching for the big show.

Check this out - they've clearly fallen for it hook line and sinker. I mean not that there was anything to fall for or something like that.
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Dear Mr. Slabovich

How are you? First off I really enjoyed your email so thank you. We are glad to hear that you are as excited as we are about Chris Sharma coming to Australia. Thank you for taking the liberty of polling some great candidates for the MC roll. We have to agree that all three of the names put forward are definitely legends - and it's great to see that they represent SCA so heavily. I will have to pass this email on to Robert Parer the owner of ICP and see what he thinks about the mentioned candidates. I should have a solid answer for you in a few days.

Out of interest are you representing SCA directly or just the three candidates mentioned?

Well I'm psyched for it - sounds great, maybe not quite the 'Great debate' at the Climbing Festival a few years ago, but getting there ...
I can see it now . . .
Macca- "Blah, blah,trad, blah,blah, etc . .. What do you think Niel?'
Niel: " . . . . ." (Tumble-weed blows by) . . .

And seriously what it is with this 'hard,hard,hard' ? No sense of history . . . .
Shouldn't it be 'extremely, very severely, F'in, almost impossibly, hard, hard' or something similar in the vein of the great British adjectival grading system . . .